Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.

The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport.

I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.

I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.

I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth.

That is supposed to be the rallying cry of women in the age of AIDS: no condom, no sex. But the dirty little secret is that the rallying cry is a whisper.... The great unspoken on the heterosexual AIDS front has been how behavior is still determined by the old psychosexual minuet of the sexes, the lack of responsibility in young men and of assertiveness in young women.

I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now.